Conversations with Sam: Part One

[It seems I have several series going at the same time. Here's another one.]

Sam Bridges was a quiet, unassuming man. During the depression he had begun a life-long pattern of earning extra cash through fishing and trapping. The youngest son of a carpenter/tenant farmer, he stayed on the farm to help his elderly parents throughout the depression and during the early days of World War II. A confirmed bachelor, he was drafted in his thirties and served as a medic in northern Africa. As he was preparing to tend to wounded soldiers on a hospital ship headed for the States it was attacked and he was injured. His hands were wounded and he was thrown down a flight of stairs injuring his back. When he got to the US the bandages were removed exposing gangrene. Most of the muscle was removed from his hands and he began years of recurring hospitalization and intermittent surgeries. The remainder of his life would be marked by chronic pain and limited use of his arms and hands.

At the age of forty-four he married and began another life. Twenty-two years later he welcomed me into his family.

It would be an understatement to say Thelma Bridges was disappointed with her oldest daughter’s choice in husbands. I had straight, blond hair; my parents were from Georgia, and I was a Church of God minister, three strikes, any of which was a disqualifying foul. The Church of God was mysteriously held in disdain; we were some form of simpleton, low-life, blight on Christendom. Thelma was “Pentecostal” and for her that meant she was a life-long member of the McNeely Memorial Pentecostal Holiness Church founded by her grand-mother, Sally McNeely. We had been married a dozen years before she was willing to call me by my right name.

Sam put forth a valiant effort to compensated for her animosity. On my first visit and frequently thereafter he told me how it was Earl Paulk, Sr. as pastor of the Tremont Avenue COG who arranged for the Church of God to take in his orphaned niece and nephews, give them a home and an education. The boys grew up to be COG pastors. Although he never exactly said so, it was clear from the twinkle in his eye he was proud of them.

Whenever we would visit the women would scatter leaving Sam and I to talk. He always seemed hesitant at first, waiting on me to break the ice. Always curious about the way things use to be, I wanted to know about his earlier life. With our age difference he was a living history book and he was more than willing to talk about the things he had witnessed. Although sometimes I suspected he was just humoring me. He was so soft-spoken I had to strain to hear, but his stories were always captivating even if a little cryptic.

What I discovered in these long talks was a humble man of deep devotion, steadfast love, unshakable faith and child-like mischief.